Applications

RADIANS research focuses on 4 basic applications of radiation measurement and analysis:

  • Detection: recognize the presence of an anomalous radiation source, inconsistent with naturally occurring radioactive material (NORM), industrial or medical sources, and/or variations in terrestrial and cosmogenic background
  • Localization: find an anomalous radiation source in a dynamic (spatially and temporally varying) environment cluttered by NORM and background
  • Identification: determine that an anomalous radiation source has spectral and/or temporal signatures consistent with special nuclear material (SNM) or other radiological material characteristic of a nuclear weapon or a radiological dispersion device (RDD)
  • Characterization: estimate the properties (e.g., isotopic composition, fissile mass, neutron multiplication, and shielding) of an unknown radiation source from its spectral and temporal signatures

The fundamental techniques we apply to solve these problems include:

  • Gamma spectroscopy
  • Neutron multiplicity and time-correlation
  • Neutron and gamma imaging
  • Analysis of fission chain-reaction dynamics
  • Bayesian and nonlinear optimization methods for parameter estimation
  • Machine-learning to correlate measurements to nuclear material properties
  • Sensitivity analysis and uncertainty quantification (SA/UQ)
  • Modern digital data acquisition (DAQ) and signal processing (DSP)